Hugh Paterson was a lawyer, joint deputy-keeper of the signet, and builder of Bannockburn House. He was made a baronet in 1686, apparently by the influence of Alexander Stuart, 5th Earl of Moray. Paterson had worked for the earl’s mother Margaret Home, Countess of Moray. She bequeathed him a small necklace of pearls, bracelets, and eight seals.

Bannockburn House

Family papers indicate that Alexander Stuart and his mother had a major disagreement after the death of his father in 1653. The cause was money. Two issues were valuable assets that Margaret Home held in her own name, such as the mill at Cullaloe by Aberdour, and the debts of the late earl, especially a loan from John Clerk of Penicuik. A cautioner for the loan, Alexander Brodie of Brodie, became liable for the money and, objecting to pay, was “horned” at the cross of Forres. Brodie may have enlisted the support of Alexander Stuart at this point, and Margaret Home drafted a passionate declaration denouncing Brodie and her son to present to an advocate, Alexander Falconer of Halkerton.

Relations thereafter may have continued to be distant. Margaret Home died in May 1683. Hugh Paterson, who was evidently familiar with her houses at Donibristle and in Edinburgh’s Canongate, helped make inventories of her possessions. Alexander Stuart, now Earl of Moray, was in London. His son, Charles Stuart (later Lord Doune and Moray), sent him updates and these letters have interesting sketches of Hugh Paterson at work and his interventions in other family disputes. He calls Paterson “Bannockburen” and his son and business partner “Litle Hugh Patersone”.

Paterson and the housekeeper Anna Forrest rediscovered a significant cache of silver in a closet adjacent to Margaret Home’s bedroom at Moray House in the Canongate. He gave Charles Stuart a recommendation for the good treatment of the gardener in Edinburgh, which Charles seems inclined to disregard: “the gardner the old man still, he can doe no work himself, all that Bannockburen says for him is that he hes been an old servant, but you may doe what you pleas with him”.

Charles Stuart explores his grandmother’s house with Hugh Paterson and Anna Forrest.

Paterson made a reckoning for the cost of Margaret Home’s funeral. On the Friday after the funeral at Donibristle, there was a supper at a house in Inverkeithing, almost certainly in Fordell’s Lodging. Charles Stuart gives a vivid account of an argument there, as the family confronted his uncle Francis Stuart, a favoured son of Margaret Home, thought to have received substantial gifts from her in her lifetime. Francis, whatever his role had been, was now given a hard time.

Charles wrote to the earl that Francis complained: “everie day he hears that thay calumniat him to you, that he should have embasild furnitur and stolen away goods out of the House of Dunebrisell, but what oaths he did swear that he did niver take the worth of a six pens”.

Charles continued that Francis Stuart and “Bannockburen had verie free languig, in short, he told thay your lordship was offended he went from Dunibirsell before my ladies funerall, and that he was not present at it, then, that he should have takin any thing out the house, till he had acquainted you and gottin your leave”. Francis then assured Charles that he had now written twice to the earl and only spoke of him with “all deference that can be”. Hugh Paterson left them talking at the Inverkeithing supper table, where Charles Stuart remained to defend Paterson’s reputation from Francis’ implications which included a suggestion that Paterson was an “underling”.

Henderson of Fordell’s Lodging in Inverkeithing was probably the dinner venue.

Hugh Paterson, who had his own coal workings (HMC Mar & Kellie, 1: 208), subsequently toured the Moray coal mines in Fife with Charles Stuart, and they established or renewed a chain of command with the colliers. Charles Stuart wrote: “I gave them two dollars, Amongst them to drink your Lordship’s good health and to be diligent in ther work and to obay ther oversman as they have promised to doe, if thay doe not obay him Killrie befor Mr Shaw, Bannockburen & I told the Coalliers he would punishe any that did not severilly”.

Charles Stuart’s letters and related papers are kept with the papers of the Earls Moray, National Register of Archives for Scotland, (NRAS) 217, box 6 nos. 120-123. Hugh Paterson of Bannockburn (died 1696) married Elizabeth Kerr in 1654, and their son “Little Hugh”, married Barbara Ruthven, (History of the Society of Writers to Her Majesty’s Signet (Edinburgh, 1890), p. 159).